Precise (30 page)

It’s not me about to be killed by Brent this time. This event, this murder, cannot happen. Liam will not die for me.

I don’t have a choice. Like I don’t get to choose if I love Ella. My thoughts are on autopilot.

I lunge forward and grab. My body shocks me again: I have stolen Brent’s knife.

I don’t know what to do with it, don’t want to hurt anyone with it. Oh my God. I have a knife in my hands and I could hurt someone. I’m not sure what I had expected to do with it when I picked it up. I can only focus on keeping it away from Brent. Then he can’t harm us with it.

Gripping the knife tight, I will my fingers to hold on for as long as they can. That I must pass out before this knife harms Liam.

Brent has his hand hovering over the empty spot on the concrete for a second. He looks up. Black and white eyes again, pupils dilated. His lip snarls.

I see Liam for the briefest of moments, his bloodied eyes wide. His cut lip in an O-shape. He sees what I have in my hand. I can’t look at Liam’s face and I can’t look away. His eyelids flitter, a breath escapes and that pain radiating from him hits my chest. That moment, in slow motion, creates an unbreakable link between us.

In that split second, I am not courageous, or quick. Blood drips over my thoughts. Shaky hands. Vomit, so chunky, splayed everywhere. I don’t understand any of it. But for a second Paul’s body is there. I blackout that image.

Brent must think I’ll lunge or duck away, that’s why, when he stops centimeters away from my face, we share the same confusion. When I look behind him to the shock wiped over Liam’s face, then to the hot liquid warming my hands, I am a million thoughts.

My hands are frozen in fear, frozen so tight that . . . why is there pressure on the knife? . . . so rigid, that the knife barely flinched when Brent launched himself onto me. My dress feels heavy with moisture. The colors blend seamlessly.

I stagger back, my lungs two bags of plastic again. The knife stays nestled in Brent’s body.

Oh!

I blink against liquid splashed across my face. Then his weight drops back onto Liam. And to a heap on the floor.

I am rasping as I look at Brent’s body keeled over, writhing slightly in the pooling blood encircling him. For seconds, all I hear are the thuds of blood whooshing inside my ears, feel the silence in the hanging heavy air, taste the fear that has paralyzed me, completely.

Liam rushes over to me.

“Kates,” he starts, but nothing else seems to matter as he holds me tight. The pain throbs but I’m too tired to push and I need someone to hold me together.

“Do you have your phone on you?” I ask when we part. “Text Nancy and ask her if Ella’s okay.”

As much as I can’t wait to hear her voice, I have to. It’d be a federal crime to chat on the phone and let Brent lie here like this.

Liam punches some buttons in his phone then walks off with it against his ear. He is surprisingly calm as he walks in circles under the moonlight outside. I clean up on a faucet, scrubbing hard so that maybe the memories itself may be erased.

The officer keeps Liam on the phone after he says, “Okay, hurry, he doesn’t have much left in him.” And, “Yes, she’s in a bad way too.”

I wait inside by Brent. As he loses more of himself to his injuries, I do my best to preserve what I can via the directions Liam passes on to me. I return with the cloth from the car that had been wrapped around my mouth. I tighten it over Brent’s chest, around the knife. I have heard somewhere not to pull out the protrusion from the wounded’s body, so I don’t feel blind as I follow these directions. I use as much pressure as I am able to muster.

The officer is still on the phone to him. I don’t know what else she says. There’s nothing we can do until the faint
wee-oo wee-oo
sirens in the distance arrive and help pours out with stretchers, bandages and support.

Yabber, yabber, yabber, the officer’s voice goes as I mouth
I love you
to Liam, but he only says, “Yes, we can hear the sirens now. Yep, and see the lights.”

“P
lease,” I tell the man who’s been doing things to my ribs since he and his partner loaded me on this gurney and wheeled me into the ambulance. “I’m fine to talk. I need to talk to Liam.” I nod across from me, where Liam’s sitting upright and a lady is dabbing something at his lips.

“Sir,” the man says to Liam. “You’re right to speak to the lady if you want. She’s worn off the sedative and refuses to stay still, despite her cuts re-opening and her fractured rib.” He shrugs. “I s’pose you’d better get the talking out of her. Maybe she’ll relax.”

“I’m done here, for now,” the lady officer says, dusting her hands together.

The drive is quite smooth. We bump about with the speed of the vehicle, but I can only see glitters of the blue and red lights reflecting on shiny surfaces because our ambulance only has the emergency lights on. Brent’s has the lights and the sirens, the whole kit and caboodle.

“She’s done,” the man says. He nods at me. And Liam.

“We’re done,” Liam says. His voice sounds like butter. Melting me. Reassuring me everything’s fine. But, to check, I say, “Come the fuck here now.”

Both the man and lady officers’ eyes pop as Liam gets to his knees and kneels by my stretcher. I push up on my hands, forgetting that one was gushing blood just before, but the man lays me down again.

Sighing, I say, “So you think Ella is fine then.”

“Fine,” Liam repeats. “Nancy’s kept me updated.”

“And what Brent gave her—”

“—were sleeping pills. Just too many,” Liam says, finishing my sentence.

“Okay, as long as you’re sure.”

His eyes are young. He has various stitches holding his face together in place, some bandages and discoloring, but the eyes. They’re warm, glowing. It’s nice that something still feels all right.

Calming, I remember to ask, “How did you find me?”

Liam darts his gaze to his lap and inspects the officers without moving his head. He seems to think. After a while, he says, “Brent took off in a hurry, so I went to get him back.” Liam throws his hand up in despair. “It was your party, for crying out loud! I spoke to Nancy and that’s when I realized you checking on the ‘friend’ was going to Cooper’s house.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.” Liam fingers the material of my shirt over my legs and within seconds his touch heats my thighs. With the layers of the material, though, it must be my imagination twisting my stomach in a knot and flushing heat.

Liam smirks, and suddenly, my ribs start hurting, my body aches. I pull him in by his ripped shirt. His toned chest faces me as I pull the material toward me. His chest says to me
thwack!—
look at how hard and solid and delicious I am.

“Liam? Thank you for saving me. Everything. But now? Kiss me.”

The lady smirks, and faces the side of the van, buried in a medical bag. Suddenly, the guy is writing some stuff down.

“Okay,” Liam says.

I pull him in. There’s a scent of something metallic, but that’s hardly surprising given the blood soaked through him and me. Under that, as I suck in a deep breath, and my eyes flutter from pleasure, I smell Liam. Just him. Oh how I’ve missed that. Ella’s fine. Liam’s here. We’re okay.

“Okay,” I repeat, grinning.

Liam’s face drops, becomes somber. “I drove and drove in circles until I came close enough to hear the screams. Kates,” he stops, holding my jaw and melting my eyes and everything in me like liquid pleasure. “It scared the living daylights out of me. When I came in and realized he had choked you unconscious, God, I prayed it wasn’t too late. I tried CPR but I couldn’t see if it worked right. You started coming back but . . . ” Liam drops his hand to my chest and traces the faint outline of my ribs under the sheet covering me. “Guess it did. Sorry about your rib. Brent just ripped into me . . . I had to fight back . . . ”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

I have the urge to trace Liam’s snail trail. The one I saw when we’d go swimming at the beach as kids and we’d strip to our bathers. I want to feel his breath on my ear. Curl against his body. When everything’s wrong, he’s my safe.

“I should have told you sooner that someone raped me at that party. Even if I didn’t know who it was, I had scattered memories, or didn’t think you’d help, because you would have. You could have . . . ”

Liam looks like he has a bitter taste in his mouth. Then he half smiles and says, “You don’t have to apologize.”

I twist my face in irritation. I wish he’d stop being sensitive. I want him to grab my face, catch his breath a moment before our lips meet, lick his lips, and kiss me. Hard.

“You stink,” I say.

Liam rests his elbows on the bed, and leans in, knowingly allowing me to feel and see and smell him. He thinks he’s irritating me. He is. I want to ravish him.

I imitate a repulsed face. “No thank you.” I turn my head.

“What? You mean,” Liam says, and when he brings my chin around, our foreheads, noses, lips touch, because we’re both trembling, “you don’t want this?”

Oh. My. God. I suck in a breath and expect his body to slip inside me, as if it were a puff of smoke. He’s so close my breath staggers as I try to inhale again. He licks his lips, and grins, all the while holding his gaze at my mouth.

“Erm, hm, no,” I say, chuckling.

He traces my lips with his finger. Does the same with my nose. Finally, he traces my lips with his bottom lip. “Still no?”

Heat surges through my body, and I want to bury in the delight and never come out. My body is heaven, and Liam is feeding me more, multiplying this feeling of heat and pleasure.

A groan, just a light sound, escapes my lips, and I see the answer finally register in the way one side of his mouth curls up.

Liam cups my face. Steels his bright eyes onto mine. I pretend I don’t feel him trembling. He sucks my lower lip once; slips his tongue over, around, and under mine twice over; and then I lose count as he sucks my thoughts and awareness into him. I grab at his shirt, wanting to rip it apart, and crush my lips against his over and over.

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Big thanks to the person who inspired the idea for this novel, and Katie. The journey wasn’t easy, but I feel for everything you’ve been through since living in Katie’s world. Lots of love to you.

The amount of people I had beta read and critique this manuscript was huge. This novel has so many more layers and depth because of: Amber Beilharz, Clare Ayala, Beth Murrell, Kim Koning, Susan Alrawi, Maria Snell, Heather Rolandelli, and Lily Robertson. I could list every single way you’ve made this story better, but I don’t have the space. But thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Lauren McKellar thank you again for a stellar job editing. I will continue to refer you to every author I can.

My family and boyfriend, you all have been incredible, and from making my dinner to listening to me talk, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.

Lastly, I thank you for reading this story because without you, it would just be a manuscript.

Rebecca Berto is the Amazon bestselling author of
Drowning in You
and writes stories about love and relationships. She gets a thrill when her readers are emotional reading her books, and gets even more of a kick when they tell her so. She’s strangely imaginative, spends too much time on her computer, and is certifiably crazy when she works on her fiction.

Rebecca Berto lives in Melbourne, Australia with her boyfriend and their doggy.